Personnel involved in handling of items are routinely required to manage and organize the items for delivery to an appropriate user or process. An item as used herein, means or refers to a separate article, object, or product. Care is required to ensure that the correct item is delivered to the user or process. Examples of such item-management tasks involve handling of medicament or nutriceutical items ultimately intended for use by a patient, consumer, or other user. A medicament means or refers to a medication product while a nutriceutical can represent a dietary supplement which provides health or medical benefits. (e.g., a vitamin, a mineral, or a supplement.)
Items such as medicaments and nutriceuticals are provided in various physical forms, such as solid or substantially solid forms, granular forms, gel forms, and liquid forms. Solid or substantially solid medicament and nutriceutical items may be shaped into small solid tablets in the physical form of capsules, spheres, ovals, disks, multi-angles, squares, triangles, and ellipses. Gel, granular, or liquid-form items may be packaged in the form of small capsules and gel caps (for oral consumption), or ampules containing a liquid. Medicament and nutriceutical items may also be provided which differ in strength of the active chemical constituent. For example, a single medicament or nutriceutical item may be provided with a concentration of 1, 5, or 10 milligrams of the active chemical constituent.
One way in which the foregoing types of items are managed for delivery to the ultimate user is through automated dispensing machines. Automated dispensing machines are frequently utilized by pharmacies, hospitals, long-term care facilities, and others in the health-care field for purposes of automatically dispensing medicaments required to fulfill patient prescription orders and to dispense medicaments administered to patients in hospitals and long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes. Automated dispensing machines can also be used in retail distribution, such as to dispense nutriceutical or food items. Such automated dispensing machines are computer controlled to dispense an appropriate quantity of medicaments and, typically, to package the medicaments. And, automated dispensing machines can typically be programmed to dispense and package all medicaments required to fulfill all prescription orders and dispense requests for a given eight-hour work shift. The automated dispensing machine will proceed to automatically execute the instructions until all requested medicaments have been output.
Automated dispensing machines typically store and dispense a plurality of different medicament types. Medicaments which are frequently prescribed or utilized, referred to as “fast-moving” medicaments, are stored within the automated dispensing machines in large quantities as loose, bulk form items within cassettes, cells, canisters, magazines, racks, or other storage apparatus. A single medicament type is stored in each storage apparatus.
Medicaments which are less frequently prescribed or utilized are referred to as “slow-moving” medicaments. Medicament types which are infrequently required may be stored in the automated dispensing machine in what is referred to as an “exception storage apparatus,” a type of storage apparatus which derives its name merely from being an alternative to the medicament storage apparatus used for the faster moving medicaments. Slow-moving medicaments could include medicament types with unusual chemical constituents or with unusual active-constituent concentrations. An exception storage apparatus stores small quantities of the less-frequently used medicaments which could not be efficiently stored in large bulk quantities. Unlike the cassettes, cells, canisters, magazines, racks, or other storage apparatus for the faster moving medicaments, more than one medicament type can be stored in a single exception storage apparatus.
An exception storage apparatus can be provided, for example, as a drawer, or as a tray-like device, which pulls out from the automated dispensing machine and which includes a plurality of medicament-holding cells, or compartments, for holding one medicament item or a small quantity of medicaments. In certain automated dispensing machine types, the cells of the exception storage apparatus are movable along a track. The cells can be indexed forward along the track toward an opening so that the cell contents fall serially (i.e., one-after-the-other) through a cell bottom opening for packaging by the machine. Any number of cells can be provided in the exception storage apparatus. For example, an exception storage apparatus could include 64 total cells grouped in four rows of 16 cells all movable along the track. More than one exception storage apparatus may be provided.
The exception storage apparatus offers the operator an opportunity to increase the range of dispensing options because more than one type of medicament can be stored in such storage apparatus. For example, the medicaments can be arranged in the exception storage apparatus to dispense medicaments for a particular patient according to the order in which the medicaments are to be taken by the patient (e.g., breakfast, lunch, and dinner) or can be loaded to meet the medicament requirements of more than one patient.
Upon activation, the automated dispensing machine automatically meters out from the appropriate storage apparatus the desired quantity of medicament(s) called for by the prescription order or dispense request. The medicament item or items are directed from the storage apparatus to the packaging apparatus by means of gravity through a chute or other guide apparatus, or by mechanical means such as an auger. The packaging device may then load the dispensed medicaments into one or more packages. The type of package utilized is based on the capability of the particular type of automated dispensing machine. By way of example only, automated dispensing machines may load the medicaments into containers such as vials, bottles, blister packages, or pouch packages. The medicament or medicaments, once packaged in the container type utilized by the automated dispensing machine, may then be delivered to the patient or other designated user.
Loading or replenishment of the cassettes, cells, canisters, or other storage apparatus for the fast moving medicaments is relatively easy. All that is required is placement of a loaded storage apparatus into the machine (e.g., in place of a depleted storage apparatus) or the pouring of a quantity of the bulk-form medicaments into a depleted storage apparatus.
However, loading or replenishment of the cells or compartments of the exception storage apparatus is more problematic because a human being must manually load or replenish the cells or compartments. In a pharmacy, hospital, or long-term care facility, the human is a pharmacy technician or a registered pharmacist. The technician or pharmacist must manually load the medicament items directly into the exception storage apparatus cells. Alternatively, the medicament items can be placed into the cells of a “loading device.” A loading device is a device with cells or compartments that correspond to the cells of the exception storage apparatus. The loading device can be loaded at a workstation and carried to the automated dispensing machine so that the medicament contents of the loading device can be transferred into the appropriate cells of the exception storage device. By way of example only, a busy pharmacy might use dozens of different loading devices to load the exception storage apparatus during a given work shift.
The exception storage apparatus loading process is tedious and time consuming, irrespective of whether the medicament items are placed directly into the exception storage apparatus cells or are placed into the cells of a loading device for transfer to the exception storage apparatus. As can be appreciated, the loading process must be undertaken in a deliberate and considered manner to ensure that the correct medicament is placed in the correct cell or compartment. Placement of the correct medicament in the correct cell or compartment can be difficult because the cells or compartments of a typical exception storage apparatus or loading device are relatively small and are in close proximity to each other. The chance of an inadvertent error may be increased because certain medicaments have similar shapes, sizes, and appearances.
Typically, printed paper instructions are generated which direct the technician or pharmacist to place the required medicament into a designated cell or compartment. At a minimum, valuable time is required to follow the instructions. The instructions may require complex ordering of different medicament types among the cells raising the possibility, no mater how slight, that the wrong medicament could be placed in a cell or compartment. And, because the technician or pharmacist must take her eyes off the exception storage apparatus or loading device to read the instructions, and because the cells typically look alike, there is also a slight possibility that the wrong medicament item could be placed in the cell. And, since more than one loading device could be used by a pharmacy, there is a possibility, no matter how remote, that an incorrect loading device could be used to load the exception storage apparatus.
If a pharmacist is required to inspect a loading device or exception storage apparatus before use to verify that the medicaments were loaded correctly, then the pharmacist must essentially repeat the loading process to confirm that the correct medicament was received in the correct cell.
A skilled pharmacist's time is extremely valuable. Time spent loading an exception storage apparatus is time that could be spent counseling patients. And, an automated dispensing machine must typically be deactivated or taken “off line” in order to load the exception storage apparatus. Any time spent loading an exception storage apparatus can represent lost productive time in which the automated dispensing machine cannot be used to fulfill prescription orders or dispense requests, thereby decreasing efficiency and increasing costs to the operator.
Problems similar to those described for operators of automated medicament dispensing machines can exist for operators of other types of automated dispensing machines in which both fast and slow moving items must be dispensed from a single machine. For instance, the same issues would face the operator of an automated dispensing machine used to dispense nutriceutical products or other retail food products.
There is a need for an item-management system, apparatus and methods which would improve the item management and distribution process, which would facilitate more accurate item management and distribution, and which would reduce the time needed to manage items, thereby freeing personnel for other important tasks and improving the quality of care which can be offered.